‘Cuttlefish’ by Andy Seidman Note: This contribution to the Nonhuman Autonomous Space Agency is one of a series of projects…
‘Cuttlefish’ by Andy Seidman
Note: This contribution to the Nonhuman Autonomous Space Agency is one of a series of projects created in a workshop with the students of Claire Donato’s Zoopolis class at the Pratt Institute. The class asks freshman architecture students to engage with writing in parallel with their design work at Pratt. This workshop asked them to work in teams to speculate about scenarios arising from combinations of robots, animals, spacecraft, and flowers as they colonize the solar system.
First, the original pod lands. It scans the surface of the asteroid, measuring its dimensions and scale. It begins to circumnavigate the asteroid and takes the shortest path around the asteroid. Water is injected into that asteroid around this ring and cuttlefish are added. The cuttlefish begin circulating the water ring and the asteroid begins to spin. Algae in the water also begins to create a sustainable environment. The pod begins spreading outwards because of the centripetal force. Now a polar grid array of solar panels project in a ring around the asteroid. Now prairie dogs are sent into the asteroid. They begin to burrow into the asteroid and create a internal void. Oxygen spreads out from the water stream and sustain the prairie dogs. They slowly carve out holes at each pole of the space. Later, the ships will come with seeds, and lions, and soon a prairie will exist within the asteroid.